Blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was born Gertrude Pridgett in 1886 and died aged 53 in 1939 .

She first began performing as a teenager in the First African Baptist Church, and in black minstrel shows. She claimed that she first heard blues music around 1902.
In 1904 she married Will “Pa” Rainey and so became known as “Ma” Rainey . By 1906 they had joined Pat Chappelle’s Rabbit’s Foot Company, where they were billed as “Black Face Song and Dance Comedians, Jubilee Singers and Cake Walkers” They later formed their own group, amusingly named ‘Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues’.

The Raineys separated in 1916 and Ma began a close and possibly intimate relationship with fellow blues artist Bessie Smith.

Her recording career began in 1923 with perhaps her best known numbers “Bo-Weevil Blues” and “Moonshine Blues” , with “See See Rider Blues” following in 1925 . Over the next 5 years she recorded a further hundred songs including the classic blues standard “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” .

She not only sang the blues, but also performed in vaudeville and was a jazz vocalist with both Tommy Dorsey and Louis Armstrong . Her career was centered on touring until 1935 when she retired from performing and ventured into management and production of popular music shows in Georgia . This she did until her death of a heart attack in 1939.
She has been posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, as well as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ma Rainey’s music is well worth a listen to and I can recommend the 2020 Academy Award-winning film ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’if you want to know more about her life and times .